Mr. Turner and his wife (former star of soft-porn flicks like Barharella)rnare no match for the greatest press lord to date: RupertrnMurdoch.rnMr. Turner, on the grounds that it takes one to know one, hasrncalled Mr. Murdoch another “Adolf Hitler” (which puts him inrncompany with Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, PatrnBuchanan, and the editors of this magazine), but like Turnerrnhimself, Murdoch is more the two-bit thug multiplied a billionrntimes. Far from planning world conquest, these great menrndream of nothing bolder than topless girls on page three or sluggingrnit out over who can dumb down the public faster. “Murdoch’srncredo,” writes Stephen Glover in the London Telegraph,rn”is to give people what they want,” and his quarrel with TedrnTurner is really over plans to set up a 24-hour news service inrncompetition with CNN.rnEven to list (much less describe) Mr. Murdoch’s holdingsrnmight take up all the space of this magazine. He owns newspapers,rnpublishing houses, magazines, television stations, andrnsatellite networks. Here in the United States, his print holdingsrninclude the book publishing conglomerate HarperCollins, thernNew York Post, and the Weekly Standard. He owns the FOXrntelevision network and more individual American televisionrnstations than anyone, American or Australian.rnOn any one day of the week, Murdoch’s employees mayrnpretend to take an independent line, but Mr. Murdoch,rnlike any owner and master, calls the shots whenever one of hisrnprivate interests is involved. Of course, Murdoch is a shy andrnunassuming person, a Uriah Heep among media moguls, andrnwhen it came out that he had dined with Speaker Gingrich arnfew years ago, he categorically denied that it had anything to dornwith Gingrich’s HarperCollins contract, much less with any ofrnthe federal regulatory problems that the Murdoch empire wasrnfacing. A man with so many claims on his time, he explained,rnsimply could not attend to the details of a single book deal.rnIn February, however, it turned out that Mr. Murdoch doesrntake an interest in some books. According to stories publishedrnin the Telegraph, Murdoch squelched the publication of arnHarperCollins book written by Chris Patten, the last Britishrngovernor of Hong Kong. Patten had been paid an advance ofrn£125,000, but HarperCollins executives pulled the plug on therndeal, claiming the book did not meet expectations. “The materialrn. . . does not live up to the original outline,” explained AdrianrnBourne, managing director of HarperCollins’ trade book division.rnHowever, Patten’s editor at HarperCollins, StuartrnProffitt, had described the first six chapters as “inspiring, brilliant,rnand important.” Reluctant to support the firm’s officialrnstory, Proffitt was handed a gag order. He promptly quit.rnMurdoch now says that he views the deal as a mistake. Herntold the London Times, which he owns, that his publishersrn”screwed up” in accepting the book, which Murdoch dislikesrnfor personal reasons: “I have always been a bit negative aboutrn[Patten] ever since I thought he was undermining Thatcher.rnAnd I think he made a bit of a fool of himself out there after suddenlyrndiscovering democracy at the end of a 100-year rule.”rnTaken at face value, Murdoch’s explanation of his behaviorrnreveals him as petty, political, and irrational: petty in letting hisrnpersonal feelings dictate an irresponsible business decision, pohticalrnin putting his “loyalty” to Mrs. Thatcher above the credibilityrnof his firm, and irrational in refusing to see the differencernbetween Hong Kong’s 100 years as a crown colony and herrnemerging status as a possession of what may be the most brutalrnand repressive dictatorship in the world.rnMurdoch, often described as a conservative, has been lessrnthan consistent in his loyalty to the Baroness Thatcher and herrnparty. These days, he is counting on Tony Blair, whom his Sunrnnewspaper supported in the last election, to protect him fromrnthe wrath of both Tory and Labour MPs who accuse Murdochrnof undercutting his newspaper rivals in a bid to make the U.K.rna one-newspaper country. Murdoch’s critics charge his companyrnwith using the profits from his BSkyB satellite televisionrnnetwork to subsidize the London Times’ “predatory price sfrategy.”rnMr. Blair, caught between the idealism of his antimonopolyrncampaign rhetoric and the boundless wrath of KRMrn(as Keith Rupert Murdoch is known to his friends), is facing arndefeefion of his own MPs, who are angry with Blair’s governmentrnfor refusing to back a House of Lords amendment to thern”Competition Bill.” Mr. Blair’s ministers insist that the socalledrnMurdoch amendment, aimed at curbing the Times’ pricingrnstrategy, is unnecessary, but a better word might be inconvenient.rnMurdoch, meanwhile, is fighting a battle on several fronts:rnpredatory pricing in the U.K., reports of declining earningsrnaround the world, and an invesfigation into irregularities in hisrnNews Corporation’s tax records. Add to these woes, now, arnsfring of writers making public defections from HarperCollins.rnTimothy Carton Ash has already left, and abandoning the Murdochrnship is suddenly the literary rage. “One is appalled tornthink,” Booker Prize-winner Penelope Fitzgerald told the Telegraph,rn”that someone can buy a publisher like a soap factoryrnand then scrap the part they don’t want.” Doris Lessing findsrnthe affair shocking: “It is so shocking I can’t find words for it.”rn(If Lessing’s dyslexia proves to be permanent, perhaps HarperCollinsrnis better off without her.)rnThis is, of course, not the only occasion on which an authorrnhas been disciplined for writing an inconvenient book. In fact,rnat almost the same time that Murdoch was cutting Chris Patten,rnABC News forced veteran military reporter Bob Zelnick tornleave the network for signing a contiact with the conservativernRegnery Publishing company to do a book on Al Gore. Zelnick’srnreputation for candor and his previous Regnery book.rnBackfire: A Reporter’s Look at Affirmative Action, apparentlyrnalarmed ABC.rnWhat has many literati upset, however, is the ugly duplicityrnof Murdoch and company. While HarperCollins executivesrnwere cooking up a cover story (the memo has been leaked) explainingrntheir objections to a book they had not read, crusadingrnreporters at the Telegraph were uncovering a more practical basisrnfor Murdoch’s concern. The media Hitler, it seems, is veryrnsensitive to pressure from the Chinese government, which detestsrnMr. Patten. During the months preceding the Hong Kongrntakeover. Patten’s outspoken criticisms of the communistsrnmade him, in the words of the Telegraph’s Philip Johnson, “arntarget of abuse by the regime” which “denounced him as ‘arnwhore,’ a ‘criminal of a thousand antiquities,’ a ‘serpent,’ and —rnmysteriously—a ‘tango dancer.'” Murdoch has more than a billionrnpounds invested in Asian media and has openly declaredrn(in a Tokyo speech last May) that “China is a distinctive marketrnwith distinctive social and moral values that Western companiesrnlike News Corporation must learn to abide by.” Part of thernlearning process involved pulling the BBC, which had beenrntoo objective in its reporting on Tiananmen Square, off of hisrnStar TV network. Compared with the BBC, Chris Patten’srnbook deal is a trifle, and Murdoch’s publishing executives havernMAY 1998/11rnrnrn